When life gives you lemons...

About a year ago I was at Kroger and I came across an amazing deal.  They had bags of lemons for only 99c!  People who know me well would not be shocked that I told the old woman buying produce next to me, told the next person I ran into at the bread section, and the woman behind me in line about this amazing deal.  Everyone looked at me strangely - I don't think they appreciate good deals :)  Not wanting to be a hoarder and wanting to let others in on the deal I didn't grab every bag.  However I did come home with a lot of lemons.

One of my favorite desserts of all times is lemon bars.  While we are definitely taking baby steps in changing our health patterns (we recently began running... and have actually been doing well with exercise!), this is one recipe I will not be altering or looking for a new recipe with.  This is a tried and true recipe my mom introduced me to.  I plan on forcing giving this to my children, and making sure my grandkids feast on them (and if we never have grandkids.. then someone :)).

Even with making my lemon bars, which my college friends love... just letting you know they are *that* good, I still had plenty of lemons left over.  I looked up storing lemon juice and discovered that you can store the zest too.  I love using zest in recipes, and thought this was brilliant.

So, I went to zesting and juicing my lemons and freezing the juice in a mason jar, and the zest in another container.  My hands were a little sensitive later, but the squeezer Jon and I have is the best thing every for juicing!  If you have sensitive hands, or simply want something worth the investment, this is it!  Here it is below :)

I highly recommend you go out and buy it.. like now :)

 So, I have been really impressed with how the juice and zest has kept up it's flavor.  I normally would pull out the juice in the morning of the day I was going to use the juice, and just use the melted amount - which always was about what I needed.

For the zest I simply pull out the container when I begin prepping.  Zest defrosts incredibly fast!

So, today I was about to use up the 2 lemons we had and it crossed my mind that my zest was low, and that I should probably zest these lemons first.  Seriously, you would think I would be doing this every time I came across a lemon, lime or orange, but I have not.  Yet, I am not beginning.  That is what matters, right?

The moral of the story?  When life gives you lemons, learn how to make the most of them.  So, happy zesting to you who love the zing of citrus!